1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an agitating bar and an agitator including the same.
2. Discussion of Related Art
An agitator is a device that uniformly agitates at least two materials having different physical or chemical properties using a rotational force, and has been widely used in various fields such as chemistry, foods, fermentation, and textile industries. Among the materials, when a mixed fluid having a high viscosity is agitated, various types of agitators are typically used. The agitators are mainly divided into tank agitators and flow agitators according to an agitation mode. Among these, the tank agitators have been widely used, and the tank agitators use a device such as an agitating bar to agitate a fluid in an agitation tank, and are classified into various types of propeller-type, oar-type, turbine-type and helix-type tank agitators according to the shapes of blades installed at the agitating bar.
In general, the tank agitators agitate and mix a fluid by rotating a rotating shaft, which has agitation blades installed at the center in an agitation tank, outside the agitation tank to cause spiral, vertically circulating or laminar streams in the mixed fluid flowing in the agitation tank. However, the tank agitators has a problem in that, when a high-viscosity fluid is agitated using the tank agitator, the stream of fluid occurs locally in a laminar stream zone without affecting a vertically circulating stream zone, which makes it difficult to mix the fluid uniformly.
Therefore, the technology of coupling blades or impellers to an agitating bar so as to mix the high-viscosity fluid uniformly was proposed. For the proposed technology, however, when a mixed fluid flows through a fluid inlet port 200 arranged in a lower portion of an agitator as shown in FIG. 1, a stream 100 of the fluid is forced to flow rapidly toward a fluid outlet port 300 in a state in which the high-viscosity fluid is not mixed uniformly around a rotating shaft 1 of the agitating bar, which makes it difficult to mix the high-viscosity fluid uniformly.
Accordingly, there is an increasing demand for agitators capable of agitating a mixed fluid more uniformly by preventing a stream of fluid from occurring around the rotating shaft of the agitating bar and preventing the stream of fluid from flowing rapidly toward the fluid outlet port in a state in which the high-viscosity fluid is not mixed uniformly when the high-viscosity fluid is mixed in the tank agitator.
Korean Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2013-0112491 discloses an agitator capable of improving mixing uniformity of a fluid.